Song Gao

spatial@ucsb Research Associate, 2012–2017

Song Gao received his Ph.D. from the Department of Geography at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2017, investigating geospatial semantic representations for integrating volunteered geographic information with Alexandria Digital Library gazetteers, in collaboration with Professor Emeritus Michael Goodchild and Professor Krzysztof Janowicz. Prior to attending UCSB, Gao obtained his M.S. degree in Geosoft Lab (pkugeosoft.org), Institute of RS and GIS, Peking University, and his B.S. in Geography, from Beijing Normal University, China. He is currently an Assistant Professor in the Geography Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

In his research, Gao has worked extensively in analyzing mobile phone records and GPS-enabled taxi trajectories to reveal the spatio-temporal patterns of human mobility. Further, he has benefited from a valuable internship at the newly established ESRI Research and Development center in China (May–Oct., 2011), gaining experience in supporting geospatial industry strategy and software development, as he led a GIS project of Campus Smartphone Apps.

In addition to his course of study as a Ph.D. student, Gao shared his expertise by providing consultation for students at the Center for Spatial Studies’ Help Desk.